12 Years a Slave’ Director Steve McQueen has joined forces with the world’s oldest human rights organization.

The filmmaker will act as an ambassador for Anti-Slavery International, a committee set up in 1839 to lobby against slavery and related abuses.

He met with officials at the group’s headquarters in London on Monday (Feb. 3) and declared his intention to highlight the importance of working against modern-day slavery across the globe.

Referring to the hero of his Oscar-nominated movie, Solomon Northup, the free black man who was kidnapped and sold into slavery in 1841, he said, “Right now, there are Solomon Northups in every region of the world who have been taken away from their families and placed in slavery.

“I hope that, 150 years from now, a film will not be made about our ambivalence to slavery. We have to do something about it.”

He also hosted a private viewing of the movie for Members of Parliament, and urged politicians to add Northup’s book about his horrific experiences to the curriculum in England’s schools.